http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/04/29/whose-side-is-he-on/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=whose-side-is-he-on In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the investigation into its perpetrators has been marred by a series of bizarre and even alarming actions by President Obama and his administration. Unfortunately, these increasingly suggest a pattern that is at odds with our national and homeland security. The question must be occurring to many […]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-at-obamas-press-conference-a-presidential-bystander/2013/04/30/42d640be-b1cf-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_print.html
It’s never a good sign for a president when he feels compelled to assure the public he still has a pulse.
This is the unenviable position President Obama was in Tuesday morning when he held a news conference in the White House briefing room and faced a profusion of questions about the stalled pieces of his legislative program. Asked by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl whether he still had “the juice to get the rest of your agenda through,” Obama paraphrased Mark Twain’s response to a newspaper’s report that he was near death.
“You know, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated,” Obama said.
Back in 1995, Bill Clinton assured Americans that he was still relevant; this may be the first time a president asserted that he was still alive.
One hundred days into his second term, Obama has already lost control of the agenda, if he ever had control in the first place. He ricocheted through his news conference, as he has through his presidency recently, between issues and crises not of his choice.
He was asked about unrest in Syria, the September attack on American officials in Libya, the bombing in Boston, troubles implementing his health-care law and difficulty closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Karl pointed out that Obama’s gun-control legislation collapsed, that his attempts to undo the “sequester” cuts have been ignored and that 92 House Democrats defied his veto threat on a cybersecurity bill.
“Well, if you put it that way, Jonathan, maybe I should just pack up and go home,” Obama replied. “Golly.”
The president was out of sorts from the start of the news conference, scheduled for 10:15 a.m. and postponed to 10:30. Obama finally came out at 10:46. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Or good morning.”
He didn’t attempt to set the tone for the event, skipping an opening statement. And he often found himself remarking on the difficulty of his job: intelligence sharing (“this is hard stuff”), closing Gitmo (“it’s a hard case to make”), Republican governors blocking his health-care law’s implementation (“that makes it harder”) and responding in Syria (“it is a difficult problem”).
If there was a common theme to the president’s many troubles, it was an uncooperative Congress. “Right now things are pretty dysfunctional up on Capitol Hill,” he observed. As an example, he mentioned the legislation — which he signed into law — to end flight delays caused by the sequester’s furloughs of air-traffic controllers by shifting money from airport repairs and improvements. “In order to avoid delays this summer, we’re going to ensure delays for the next two or three decades,” he said.
“Why’d you go along with it?” Karl asked.
Some in the room chuckled. Obama didn’t. “You seem to suggest that somehow these folks over there have no responsibilities, and that my job is to somehow get them to behave,” he said. “That’s their job. . . . I cannot force Republicans to embrace those common-sense solutions.” He instead spoke of creating “a permission structure” for Republicans to do what he wants.
Obama is correct about the dysfunction, and the difficulty of passing even uncontroversial bills. But his stance was frustratingly passive, as if what happens in Congress is out of his hands. It’s the president’s job to lead, and to bang heads if necessary, regardless of any “permission structure.” Obama seemed oddly like a spectator, as if he had resigned himself to a reactive presidency.
In response to questions from Fox News’s Ed Henry, Obama offered some noncommittal thoughts on how he would respond to the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons (he would “rethink the range of options”).
Obama later told CBS’s Bill Plante that he had to keep the Guantanamo prison open because “Congress determined that they would not let us close it.” And, in response to a question from NBC’s Chuck Todd, the president found himself dismissing lawmakers such as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus as “nervous and anxious” doubters because Baucus warned that implementation of Obamacare could be a “huge train wreck.”
FROM JANET LEVY ROSS….
Shariah violates every tenet of the U.S. constitution, is incompatible with Western laws and values and violates ALL human rights. It is a supremacist, totalitarian, triumphalist, misogynistic, anti-Judeo-Christian, anti-American hate ideology. This slick video produced by a Muslim Brotherhood front organization effectively shifts the conceptual framework and makes Muslims look like the victims of religious persecution rather than the perpetrators of an evil system that commands complete control of every aspect of life for EVERYONE – even non-Muslims!
Our forefathers did not fight for freedom, justice and liberty to have us descend into Shariah Hell – a place where there is NO justice – no due process, no trial by jury, no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, no equal rights under the law. Shariah Hell is an existence in which Muslims control the lives of non-Muslims, women are be stoned to death for alleged sexual impropriety, girls are forced to undergo genital mutilation and endure forced underage marriages, females are restricted in their movement and activities, wives are beaten, homosexuals are hung, non-Muslims are given the choices of death, conversion or dhimmitude and must pay Muslims for the privilege of staying alive, medieval punishments are enforced for crimes including cross-amputation, eye-gouging, imposed paralysis, there is no singing, laughing or smiling, slavery and rape of non-Muslims is de rigueur, etc.
Shariah Hell has NOTHING to do with the freedom of Muslims to practice their hate ideology disguised as a religion! It has NOTHING to do with being an American! It is ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-FREEDOM, ANTI-TOLERANCE, ANTI-JUSTICE!
Be sure to watch the short video below! Don’t fall for this propaganda and be sure to educate others about this blatant deception!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lH9y7l9xcmY
http://www.barenakedislam.com/2013/04/30/florida-muslims-and-their-dhimmi-muslim-sympathizers-say-being-anti-sharia-is-being-anti-america/
Kentucky Derby features tradition but safety first
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/apr/30/kentucky-derby-features-tradition-safety-first/
NEW YORK, April 30, 2013 – Will it be another Secretariat or Affirmed to gallop into legend? For sure the race will be thrilling – but with a difference.
Caution is the word, and attendees are being alerted to “say something” if they “see something.”
Large purses, coolers and bottles are among the carry-in items that are being banned for the first time, as Churchill Downs steps up (airport-type) security for Saturday’s running of the 139th Kentucky Derby. Backpacks were forbidden in previous years, even before the terror in Boston.
More than 160,000 fans are expected to attend, and everyone will be subject to electronic scanning. The official precautionary details are available here.
So it’s come to this!
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Diplomacy-Taking-a-more-nuanced-look-at-Israel-311159
Israel’s consul-general in New York Ido Aharoni advocates shifting Israeli advocacy on campus from angry confrontations on the quad to showing Israel’s relevance in students’ lives.
NEW YORK – Spend any time at all in the US speaking with pro-Israel American Jews and one theme constantly emerges: Israel is losing the campuses.
If it is distress over the annual anti-Israel “Apartheid Week,” annoyance over Palestinian students disturbing high-profile Israeli speeches, or votes in student government bodies about disinvestment, the overall impression is that American college campuses are a beehive of anti-Israel activity. The concern expressed by many pro-Israel supporters in the US is simple: Tomorrow’s leadership cadre is being trained today at America’s universities, and they are being poisoned by a virulently anti- Israel atmosphere.
Ido Aharoni, Israel’s consul-general in New York, who spends hours upon hours on American campuses, has a much more nuanced – and as a result more sanguine – view of things.
Indeed, Aharoni has a whole different idea of what needs to be done on the college campuses: less trying to outshout radical Palestinian supporters on the tree-lined quads, and more quietly trying to make Israel relevant for the vast majority of students for whom the Middle East is distant and far down on their agenda.
“In today’s tech environment it is not about winning debates, but building relationships with people with influence and relevance, people who matter,” Aharoni says in his spacious office just off New York City’s 42nd Street. “The public debate on the quad is not where the battle should be waged. Fighting the fight and arguing the argument will never produce the leapfrog effect for Israel.”
British Ambassador Praises Palestinian Police Accused of Torture, Urges More Funding by Malcolm Lowe
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3688/israel-uk-ambassador The former PA security man makes it clear that the intention is to inflict unbearable pain while leaving a minimum of identifiable traces… The whole of the ambassador’s piece, like its opening, rings with the unqualified confidence of old-time apologies for the Soviet regime. What if the Israeli ambassador in Britain were to write […]
The Last Books “A person is born to live a long life. But if he dies before his time, what happens to his unlived life, his joys and his sorrows?”—S. Ansky, The Dybbuk Relevant Links Yiddish in America Allan Nadler, Jewish Ideas Daily. A year after Harvey Pekar’s passing, the underground comic-book writer has delivered a […]
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/04/tsarnaev_family_received_100g_in_benefits
The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012, the Herald has learned.
“The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning,” said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today.
The state has handed over more than 500 documents to the 11-member House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which today met for the first time and plans to call in officials from the Department of Transitional Assistance to testify.
“I can assure members of the public that this committee will actively review every single piece of information we can find because clearly the public has a substantial right to know what benefits, if any, this family or individuals accused of some horrific crimes were receiving,” said state Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick), the committee’s chairman.
Linsky’s committee has requested documents from the DTA, the state’s Medicaid director and Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz. But so far the committee has not released the records publicly, citing a privilege the DTA is asserting under state law.
http://www.humanrightsvoices.org/ The UN Human Rights Council’s “human rights expert” Richard Falk has been enthusiastically welcomed in certain quarters after his obscene remarks on Boston’s “canaries” and justifiable “resistance” to “the American global domination project.” Monday evening in Beirut, Lebanon, Falk received an honor named after none other than one of the biggest Democratic money men […]
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4167
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni is livid these days. Not because her other job, heading the government’s negotiations with the Palestinians, is a joke. No, she is one of those la-la-land residents who still believe that there are two sides to the story of an imminent two-state solution. So she is very proud to have been given the position as chief peace broker.
As usual, Livni is far angrier at her actual coalition partners in Israel than she is at her imaginary cohorts in the Palestinian Authority. Her latest huff came to the fore following reports in the Israeli press that Finance Minister Yair Lapid was considering supporting Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett’s bid to legislate a national referendum ahead of any final-status deal with the Palestinians.
Though Lapid supports a two-state solution and Bennett does not, the former purportedly intends to discuss the matter with the members of his party, Yesh Atid. If they do not agree to join forces with Bennett’s party, Habayit Hayehudi, on this matter, legislation for a referendum has little chance of passing a Knesset vote.
Livni, who has turned mounting her high horse into an art form, gave an interview to Army Radio on Sunday in which she attacked the very idea of putting any peace deal with the Palestinians to a public vote.
“The general elections are the true referendum,” she said. In other words, Israelis went to the polls on Jan. 22 and had their say. That constituted a mandate for their elected officials to make all the decisions.
This is a valid point, but not one that Livni has any right to make. In 2000, when she was a Likud Knesset member, she supported a bill that would require a public referendum ahead of any Knesset-approved deal with the Palestinian Authority.
